How I Met Your Mother’ starts final season

As of 7 p.m. Monday, “How I Met Your Mother’s” ninth, and final, season will be underway. While the bittersweet fact that the show is ending is difficult for us loyal fans to swallow, I can say with certainty that watching Ted meet the one (finally) will be worth the pain we feel at the close of the show. However, we have an entire season before we get to hear our suffering hero utter the words we waited nine years to hear: “And that, kids, is how I met your mother.”

Although it was quite the treat for the audience to meet “The Mother” at the end of last season, we are anxiously awaiting Ted’s reaction to seeing her for the first time. So, what can we expect along the way? And what in the world is going to happen in the 55 hours before Robin and Barney’s wedding? Let’s start with a recap from Monday’s two premiere episodes.

In the first thirty minutes of the return of our beloved Monday night sitcom, we viewed Lily excusing herself from her road trip to Farhampton with Ted, Marshall getting kicked off a flight because of an argument between him and another plane passenger, and Robin and Barney’s potential sharing of DNA! But more on that later.

The episode begins with Ted and Lily’s drive together to Farhampton. Somewhere between Ted’s obsession with his driving gloves and his desire to make stops at monuments along the way on “‘Lil’ and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” Lily decided that taking the train would be less infuriating. And, for the audience, her choice to take the train was much more rewarding than Ted’s quirky car ride, because she was the first of the gang to meet “The Mother.”

Eventually in the episode, we learn that Ted’s plans of adventure for him and Lily were actually ploys to get Lily away from him so that he could take Robin the locket she desperately dug for in season eight. Ted retrieved the locket from Stella’s (yes, that Stella) storage unit in Los Angeles. Once Ted barely beat Lily to the Farhampton Inn, he tried to give Robin the box containing what viewers thought was the locket, but Lily tackled him down first. However, Ted was smart enough to keep the locket to give to Robin on a later date. So the box he handed her truly contained a picture of the gang from season one (cue the tears).

But who cares about a locket when Lily was sitting on the train meeting “The Mother”? The whole ordeal between the two women turned out to be supremely satisfying because, thankfully, the two had insane chemistry, as seen by their sharing of “Sum’b—-“ cookies, stories of Ted’s awkward quirks (which “The Mother” completely related to), and, of course, a small cat fight that only made “The Mother” seem more lovable.

Marshall’s portion of the two episodes was the most chaotic. While on a plane from Minnesota to New York, he encounters a testy fellow plane rider named Daphne who is not fond of Marshall’s loud phone call with his mother. That argument leads to the two getting kicked off the plane and fighting for a spot on a later flight or renting a car and driving all the way to New York. By the end of the two episodes, Marshall and Daphne compromised enough to carpool together to New York, as long as Marshall pays for gas.

As for the two who were the catalysts for all of the other story lines revolving around the wedding, Robin and Barney find themselves wondering who will be the wedding “wildcard.” This led to them listing off certain family members and eventually, uncovering one that intersected. While the two eventually found out from multiple phone calls that they did not, in fact, share DNA, they were able to rest easy. Their part in the second episode revolved around discovering that James, Barney’s brother, and his husband were getting a divorce. This sent Robin into a state because she knew that the reason Barney believed in love was because of James and his husband. However, Barney surprised us all by taking the news better than expected. After this incident, Ted revealed that it was he who would be the actual “wildcard of the wedding.”

So, with story lines in place and minds anxiously creating predictions, we wonder how the final season of one of our favorite shows will play out. Will Barney and Robin go through with the wedding? How will Ted become the “wildcard”? Will Marshall issue the remaining slaps in the “Slap Bet”? Will our final moment of Ted meeting “The Mother” be everything that we dreamed it would be? The end of the episode included a flash forward of Ted and “The Mother” sitting in the Farhampton Inn, completely enamored with each other, talking about how at that exact time last year, Ted was sitting alone at the bar, and this year, he is with the future mother of his children. As he goes to check on the status of the room, the two share a quote that was the powerhouse of the episode. Before Ted walked away, he said, “I’ll be right back,” to which “The Mother” responded, “I’ll be right here.” So, fans, if that last scene gives any implication as to how the rest of the final season will turn out, it’s going to be “Legen– wait for it…”